“Joyas Volardores”, these very words are Spanish for flying jewels; this is a great title for a poem that focuses mostly on humming birds.  Brian Doyle’s work, “Joyas Volardores” at first glance seems to be just an informational text, but only with reading can you understand it is a very artistic and intricate poem.  The poem’s major theme that can be found throughout the text is hearts.  Doyle writes about every heart, from that of a blue whale to hummingbirds to humans; he also goes into great detail about the biology of these hearts, how they work, and how fascinating and magnificent they can be.  Doyle uses personification, adjectives and verbs, anaphora and, imagery to convey to his audience how great hearts are.

One of the first tools Doyle uses is personification.  He gives human qualities to his animals to make an impact on the reader.  For example, when he is writing about how fast the humming bird heart beats, Doyle writes, “their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.” (94).  Doyle uses personification by saying “infinitesimal chests”, this compares a humming bird’s chest to that of an infant.  This quote is also interesting because if kind of uses reverse personification by comparing human ears to that of an elephant.  Another time Doyle uses personification is when he is writing about what little we know about blue whales, he writes, “But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.” (Doyle 95-96).  Doyle first uses personification when he says they travel in pairs; this is human like because humans marry and therefore “travel in pairs.”  Doyle also personifies the blue whale by giving it human emotions and human adjectives such as “yearning” and “moaning cries.”  This creates an impact on the reader because by giving the whales human emotions the reader can relate to the whale.

Another tool that Doyle used in “Joyas Volardores” was that he put many adjectives or verbs in one line to describe one thing.  Doyle does this throughout the writing and they seem to become longer as the poem progresses.  He first uses this technique in the first paragraph when he is describing how amazing humming birds are, Doyle writes, “more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones” (94).  When the author uses a strand of verbs like this, it grabs the reader’s attention because of how irregular it is.  The second time this pattern of irregular attention grabbing strand of adjectives is used is when Doyle is describing the fast metabolisms of humming birds, he writes, “Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms.” (Doyle 95).  The adjectives all in a row in this quote causes the reader to think about the topic more and, helps the reader to better understand what the writer wants to convey.  The third instance Doyle uses this technique is in the final paragraph when writing about how as we get older, our hearts age as well, he writes,

 “When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall.” (Doyle 96).

This last example of the long adjectives that are used throughout Doyle’s poem are the most drawn out of them all.  This could maybe be because the last paragraph goes into great depth about the human heart’s emotions; all up to this point Doyle writes about the biology of animal hearts but, it all leads up to human emotion and how it is greater.  So, Doyle exaggerates this last strand of adjectives to emphasize that this is the meaning of the poem.

Doyle also repeats the first line in strands of anaphora.  This can be used as a tool because it is proven that the more something is repeated, the more the human brain remembers and understands.  Doyle uses this in his introduction, he says, “Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is this size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of this humming bird.” (Doyle 94).  This quote is a very effective way for Doyle to get his point across.  Not only does he state facts that he wants the reader to know before reading the rest of the poem but, he also does it in a way that is easy to understand and that the reader won’t forget.  Doyle uses this pattern again when he is talking about how hummingbirds have more heart attacks, aneurysms and, ruptures than any other animal, he writes, “It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine.” (Doyle 95).  Doyle again uses repetition of these short sentences to get his point across in an easily understandable and concise way.

The amount of imagery that Doyle uses in this poem is unparalleled.  Doyle uses this tool to bring his poem to life and create pictures in your head.  It would be impossible to see this poem so clearly without it.  For example, when Doyle is writing about how easy it is for hummingbirds to die, he writes, 

“Consider for a moment those hummingbirds who did not open their eyes again today, this very day, in the Americas: bearded helmet-crests and booted racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs and violet-capped woodnymphs, crimson topazes and purple-crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst woodstars, rainbow-bearded thornbills and glittering-bellied emeralds, velvet-purple coronets and golden-bellied star-frontlets, fiery-tailed awlbills and Andean hillstars, spatuetails and pufflegs, each the most amazing thing you have ever seen” (Doyle 95).  

This quote does wonders to the reader’s senses; with the name of each species you can see almost exactly what each hummingbird looks like.  This is very important to the poem, without it the reader is missing a key description of how colorful and magnificent hummingbirds can be seen.  Another time Doyle uses imagery is when he is describing the grandness and largeness of the heart of a blue whale, he writes, “The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale . . . It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around in it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as swinging doors in a saloon.” (Doyle 95).  This quote really brings to the magnificence of the blue whale’s heart off the paper by saying a child could walk around inside and comparing the size of the valves to saloon doors.  This quote is very important because it impacts a reader in way that they are in awe over how big this heart is.

In conclusion, Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Volardores” has many different devices to convey to the reader exactly what the author wants to say.  This poem is unlike any other in the way that it is organized; it is consisted of five paragraphs, which it makes it look more like an essay than a poem.  But with reading, any reader could tell that “Joyas Volardores” is an unconventional poem that is joy and breath of fresh air to read. 